Going to the Sea
by Moe Machina
Summary: Tseng and introspective angst are part of a whole breakfast


  
Death has a way of clarifying your thinking.

You have to look back on your life, and realize what a petty thing it was. That you were a weak and soft vessel, always on the verge of calamity. That the things you attached importance to - money, sex, power - were meaningless and transitory. That you didn't really affect anyone, and in a year's time, they will all have forgotten about you, like a sand castle in high tide.

Death also has a way of forcing out eloquent discourses on the human condition, even when you didn't give a philosophical damn about the world during life. But that's fine. I'd much rather lay here and think of abstract pleasantries than focus on the smell of fresh blood, or that feeling of wetness spreading slowly up my shirt.

Above all else, I don't want to think about the pain.

Oh, no, not the pain.

So let's think about other things for a while, for there's no lack of other things crowding in on my mind, ripping into my brain with bloody claws and screaming hungrily for more.

They've realized they don't have much time left, you see.

When I was young - stretching back to my half-remembered childhood - my teachers taught me how to tear apart other weak vessels. I was a studious pupil; I knew that either you're good at what you do or you're dead. I remember when they taught me to shoot a gun, aiming that oily black barrel at the painted targets, bracing for recoil, pulling back the trigger in that single white moment. That second of pure, breathless anxiety is always there. It doesn't matter what you're shooting at, bodies are much the same as painted cardboard in the end. And then, after it's over, you feel nothing, neither joy nor disgust. Whatever happens with the bullet doesn't matter, doesn't affect your clean, soft self.

The pain is like a drum solo against my skull, riding in with each desperate heartbeat.

They told me once about the difference between knifing and shooting, the personal and the impersonal. I can't remember their exact words, but I do recall that my left shoe had a scuff along the inside heel, and I stared down at it while they talked, trying to remember when I had scraped it. It's hard to knife someone. Dealing with the accusations and the last, furious flailings of the body. People rarely take into account the clockwork running under the skin, and so when you drive a shiv into someone's chest, you have to contend with ribs and muscles and ligaments. It's better to go for the belly or the neck, but then, if you want to kill someone, it's better to just shoot them. It's clean and quick and business-like, whereas knifing is messy and disturbing. The gun is the better choice, they told me, but don't forget what death _is_. The gun will fool you into thinking that it is meaningless and cheap, but with the knife, there is blood and curses and lingering agony. The knife shows you what death truly means.

I wonder if they knew they were lying. Nothing can show what death truly means until you're lying here on the cool white marble, staring up at an oddly patterned ceiling and feeling your life slowly slip away from you in a crimson spiral. Compared to the awful agony of anticipation, the slick edge of a knife would be welcomed.

Oh _Christ_, just think about something else, _something else_.

They'll say that I got myself into this. Yes, well, maybe I did. I'm not sorry about it, though. My old instructors, in between teaching me to shoot and kill, taught me the value of never having regrets. Not because everything one does is right and perfect and pretty, but because you can't ever look back. Once you look back - once you start to consider your lifestyle choices and think about past deeds and wonder about the essential justice of the universe - you've lost it. Just a matter of time before you're another dead body, all because your trigger finger seized up in a moment of doubt.

Or because you lost all sight of objectives and let emotions triumph over reason. During life, I had no regrets, but on the edge of death, maybe I'm allowed one. I wish I hadn't been so damned stupid about the girl.

I've lost all sense of feeling in my feet. One minute, they were there, clad in cheap white socks and expensive dress shoes, and now - nothing. For some reason, the feeling reminds me of floating in seawater, but I can't remember ever going to the sea.

She was a girl when I met her. Just a little girl, with eyes and shoes too big for her. And surrounded by the filth and decay of Midgar, she was a cool wind, untouched and unstained. They told me that she was the last hope for our world, and as she grew tall and green, I could believe it.

I regret her. Yes, I do. I regret what I fooled myself into thinking, and feeling, and seeing. 

I suppose things like that happen a lot. See, there's a _reason_ they told me to have no regrets. Once self-doubt is perched on your shoulder, wet wings flapping wildly, there's only a small stumble to questioning the justifications of the wide, clumsy world. And then...and then it's time to _change_ things. And that's when you know you've lost it, once you start thinking about the impact you'll have on the world. Because you can't choose the way you touch the world any more than the wind can choose where it blows, than the sea can pick its tides.

The ceiling has started to shift at the corners of my eyes, like it's trying to sidle away when I'm not looking. Like looking through water. And I can't really feel my body anymore - it's there, but it's growing farther and farther distant, like it's unraveling from my center.

She was here a while ago. A few minutes. An hour. I can't tell time any more. And she looked at me with those cool green eyes and I could have wept salty tears.

They took us down to the sea once. I remember now. I must have been about seven, and they dressed us in our best clothes. The worst kind of clothes to go to the beach in, because sand crept into our shiny black loafers as we mournfully stood staring at the waves, while the nuns gingerly encouraged us to play. And finally they lost interest in us and turned to their endless card games, and we stealthily peeled off our coats and shoes and snuck down to the water's edge. The sea was cold and slid icy knives into our feet, and we retreated at first from the inconstant tide.

I have not been a good man. I have no illusions about that. I don't think I ever had a chance to be a good man. I think that something is broken inside of me, that it's been broken ever since I was small. It seems sometimes like I was killed years and years ago, and I just haven't realized it yet, and I've just been going through the last furious flailings of the body.

And then we advanced into the waves together, and ran splashing until the water reached our waists and the breaking of the waves was long past. And the black figures on the shore screamed at us like sea gulls, but we were already past their grasp.

I have always been alone, for some reason. It's easy to say that's the reason I did the things I did to her, so that finally there would be someone else like me. I was just a mad scientist, making a bride for his personal monster.

And we kept running, until the water ran up to our chests, until we buoyantly floated above the sandy bottom. A wave came, big and monstrous and black, and went crashing over us, sending us tumbling down under the cold, cold water. For a moment, I was trapped in the crushing dark and my mouth filled with salt. And then I pushed off on the firm, shifting sand and rose up towards the gritty sunlight, and broke through the surface of the amniotic fluid. They were all around me, these faceless children of my past, and we clutched hands and laughed at the sheer joy of it all.

My regret is that I helped do unto another what had been done to me. Because now she carries little broken bits inside of her, the shattered remains of a soul and a heart and a voice. And she'll never be whole and she'll never be happy and she'll do unto others what has been done to her. She's already started - I know that _he_ already harbors her devastation. And she could have been the savior of our world, but now she's just another weak vessel.

I'm dying now. I've always been dying. I'm just not afraid of it anymore.

Cold green fingers touch my chest, my face, my eyes.

I'm even a little eager for it. Death has a way of clarifying your thinking.

Maybe I'm drowning.

Maybe I'm rising to the surface.  
  
(01/21/01)  



End file.
